Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
